Death Ray Butterfly by Tom Lichtenberg (best ereader for pdf and epub txt) 📕

arm which wasn't wounded but that could have been part of the setup too. Adjacent universes, slightly different, stacked together infinitely like pages in a book. Sounded shady, maybe even illegal.

Jones got up and bowed like some old timer.

“Good night, Inspector”, he said. “We will meet again soon. In the meantime, I release you. You may use the device to your heart's content, but I would warn you. There are only a certain number of clicks in it, I can't tell you how many, and when it runs out, there you are, in whichever universe you end up in, and there will be no further way out of it. Ever again.”

And with that, he turned and walked out of the house, leaving me stuck in the molasses of my mind.

Fifteen

I had a lot of questions. Naturally they hadn't occurred to me until Jones was gone, and he was probably the only person in the universe - or in any universe - who could answer them. For instance, if I really had switched into another reality, what happened to the me that was already there? Was I that me now? Did I merely turn into that person, merge with him, replace him, be replaced by him - how did that work? And what if I switched into a reality where that me didn't exist, had died perhaps. Where would I go? What if I clicked into a reality where that me was in the midst of dying? Would I die too, within him? And what happened when I switched out, was it visible, was it audible, what would witnesses observe?

If I was a different me now, a me that had always lived in this place and not in that one, how would I know? Would I even know? Would familiar things seem strange and strange things familiar? If the differences were slight, how could I tell? And if the differences were great, would I even be aware of them? It was a lot to sort through. First I had to nail down the fact of Kruzel's death or non-death. How could I remember a crime scene that hadn't in fact existed? That would make the case for the merging-of-me's theory, but wouldn't necessarily negate any others. All of them could be true, and none of them.

I don't believe I slept at all that night, and in the morning required a pot and half of coffee just to get my ass downtown to HQ. There my assistant, Kelley, was as industrious as ever, waiting with a stack of new and old cases for me to mull over and decide which one to pursue that morning. I told Kelley we were going to visit Kruzel's again. Kelley said,

“What do you mean again? We haven't been there in months.”

“We were just there last night”, I started to reply, but held my tongue. I wasn't about to go into the details. Kelley and I headed down to the riverboat, where everything was perfectly normal as usual. Dennis Hobbs was there to greet us, and Jimmy Kruzel was exactly where and how I had seen him the night before, in his captain's cabin, fidgeting behind his desk. He was nervous about our being there, but I didn't read too much into that. The little creep was always nervous. Hobbs, on the other hand, was overly formal and polite, and we didn't stick around long. I asked a few questions about Jones, when he'd been there last, and so on, and had to listen to Kruzel complain about him ever even being there at all, turning on Hobbs and saying, over and over again, how he just didn't understand, how come his instructions regarding Jones were always being ignored. Hobbs shrugged and pretended he had no idea.

I returned to our building and planted myself in the kitchen area with several bags of snacks and more coffee. For some reason I could always think better in the break room than anywhere else. Maybe it was the brightness of the lights, or the smell of the place, I don't know. I also enjoyed the trivial exchange of greetings with the other cops and staff as they drifted in and out of there. That morning I had the honor of a conversation with the haughty Captain Rendira Cameroon. She pulled up a chair and told me of a peculiar incident just recently occurred.

“A woman came in to see me”, she said, “A woman I vaguely recognized but didn't put the name to until later. She gave me some phony one instead, Marka Willander, ring any bells?”

I shook my head. Never heard of a Marka anyone for that matter. Cameroon went on.

“Anyway, this Marka whatever told me she'd been having a strange dream, about a murder. Well, that got me listening, I can tell you. I figured this woman must've had something to do with it, and now it was on her conscience, so I looked her over more closely. Middle-aged, unnaturally thin, unnaturally tan as well; long and straight gray hair. She was dressed pretty shabbily, jeans and boots, flannel shirt, like she worked on a ranch or something. She went on about the dream, said she knew where the body was. Well, long and short of it is, she convinced me to go with her and to bring along a couple of lab guys and shovels. We went up in the hills around Fulsom Park, on the riverside, you know? The woods over there, and she took us right to a spot, and I mean right to it. She'd been there before. It wasn't some dream, I was sure.”

“The guys started digging in with their shovels and sure enough we came across some bones, so they started digging with their hands, with more care. Pretty soon we had the thing pretty much uncovered. Body'd been in there awhile, long enough those bones were picked pretty clean. The woman all this time was just standing there alongside me, not showing any emotion in particular. I asked her if she knew who the body had been. She shook her head, but I didn't believe her. I kept asking her. I got pretty harsh, started telling her I thought she had done the murder, I was going to bring her in, arrest her, lock her up until she talked, that kind of thing. Finally she gave me a look and said, in almost a whisper,

I couldn't have done it. It was me they killed. That body is me.

I was planning on busting her anyway, freaky as all this was I wasn't satisfied, and besides it made no sense. I figured I'd better check with Mole! I really did. So here I am.”

She laughed, and I wondered if this didn't seem like deja vu to her. It did to me. I knew it had happened before, but not exactly like this. Last time she had taken me to see the body. I had been there. In my own bones I knew about those. But something else she had said was bothering me.

“You said you figured out who she was?”

“Yeah”, Cameroon replied, “After I lost her. Did I tell you that? We went back to the car and she somehow got away from me. Must have slipped into the trees. I looked around for a bit, but that park's pretty huge, and anyone wanting to get lost in there, well, it would take more than just me to track them down. I had tapped her DNA in any case so I figured I'd just put her in the system and see if anyone turned up. They did. Was a female who went by the name of Racine. You remember Racine, don't you, Mole?”

Of course I remembered. And I think I had a clue how she vanished, but that wasn't the time or the place to bring it up. I just nodded my head and said something about how you see something new every day.

Sixteen

I had a queasy feeling in my stomach when I suggested to Captain Cameroon that she might want to bring in Curly and Rags for questioning. History was repeating itself, but not as farce, merely as banality. Or it wasn't repeating itself, it was simply happening in a different order, and maybe the sequence of events was not important, only the ends. And maybe those weren't important either. She wanted to know why I suspected those two, and all I could tell her was that they, along with Racine, were all known associates of Dennis Hobbs, and I just had a hunch about it. I wasn't famous for my hunches, but all cops wind up playing them sooner or later.

She let me sit in on the questioning. It was pay dirt, as I knew it would be. Curly spilled his guts right away, without even prompting. Rags said very little, and what he did say, he said in a whisper. It was clear he was spooked. The whole thing had rattled him. According to Curly, it was all set up by Arab Jones. Why was I not surprised? He told them they could kill her with impunity, and not only wouldn't she actually die, but she'd even be there to witness her own murder. Rags already believed her to be dead. He swore he'd seen her ghost murder a friend of his out in the woods somewhere. Killing her would be impossible, since she was already dead, but it would also not be a crime, for the same reason.

Curly was always good for an adventure. Usually Rags would try and shield him, keep him away from the really bad things, but this time there was no holding him back. Curly just had to see for himself. Kill her and she won't be dead? What kind of a trick was that? And it was okay with her? Jones said it was. Racine wasn't so sure. She made a bit of a fuss, wasn't so anxious to go along with the plan, no matter how many reassurances she got. So they tied her up. That was no mean feat by itself. Everyone knows how dangerous that woman is. Or was. Or is and was both. It took all their strength, including Jones', to subdue her. Oh yes, he was in on it, and Krispy Talbot was there too, although he wasn't much help. Curly was happy to implicate anyone who even knew it was happening. He named a whole bunch of names.

He said they took her up into the hills beside the park. Everything was Jones' idea, the time, the place, the method of execution. Even the gun was his. Small caliber, silver bullet job. He made Curly do the killing, though. First he wanted Rags to do it, but Rags was too freaked out. It was all he could do to hold the victim down. Curly was shouting, so where is she? Where's the other one? You said she'd be here twice, or something like that. Curly wasn't very clear on the concept.

“She'll be here”, Jones promised. He had that smug, self-satisfied look on his face like he always does, according to Curly. Rags nodded in agreement with that.

“I hate that Jones”, Rags muttered. “Son of a bitch.”

“Aw, he's okay”, said Curly. “He's got his good side too, like anyone.”

Not like anyone, though, Jones choreographed the murder of Racine. While she was kneeling in the mud, bound and gagged, hands tied behind her back, he kept talking to her, calmly, in a low voice, telling her it was all for the best, it would be good for her, she wouldn't feel a thing, he